Tuesday, 18 November 2014

Blonde

About a year ago I decided that I wanted lower maintenance hair. I've dyed my hair a variety of darker colours since I was about 15 (bar one or two DIY blonde moments that didn't last long). My natural colour is sort of a mousey blonde so I used to have to re-dye my hair fairly often as my roots were so noticeable.

So about a year ago I embarked on a mission to return my hair to its natural colour. A year later and its still a long way off - mousey blonde down to my ears and then a faded orangey brown colour past that. Not the best look.

So on a weekend impulse I decided to sort it out. I've dip dyed my hair before back when it was brown and it's a look I really like and is very low maintenance in terms of re-dying because you can leave it as long as you like!

I'm pretty stingy when it comes to having my hair done - I have my hair cut once every six months and I've only ever had it salon dyed once. Inevitable dying disasters have occured, so I was determined this wasn't going to be one of them.

I've used a home dip dying kit before (L'Oreal Preference Wild Ombres) and found it easy to use, but a bit disappointing when it came to how my hair actually looked. There wasn't a gradual ombre effect as promised on the packet, it was more a straight line of two-tone hair!

Because I knew this I decided to do it differently this time to achieve a more natural looking fade to blonde, with some of my natural colour still mixed in. So instead of buying a dip dye kit, I bought 'L'Oreal Preference Brush-On Glam Highlights' kit, with the intention of just applying it to the ends of my hair.

The kit was super easy to use, with a three pronged plastic comb to apply the mixture to before brushing it through my hair. I applied it to the underneath of my hair so that the change in colour wouldn't be too sudden and I started from the ears down. I applied more of the mixture towards the very ends of my hair to achieve a gradual lightening effect. I used the medium coloured kit, which is for dark blonde to light blonde hair. In hindsight I'd maybe go for the darker kit for brown hair as the colour is very slightly yellowy, maybe because it was a little bit too light for my hair colour.

For a first attempt I was extremely happy with the results. It's a really easy method to get a gradual dip dye highlighted effect and it's a lot cheaper than getting it done at the hairdressers - the kit cost me £7.49 from Boots. I think I'd definitely use it as a full highlighting kit in the future as well as the highlights are really even as long as you top up the brush each time you do a stroke. All in all I'm just happy to have interesting hair again!